


Green Incarnations

by tkp (lettered)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-29
Updated: 2007-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/tkp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta gen about the color of Harry's eyes, the killing curse, Neville Longbottom's thumb...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Incarnations

**~Ginny~**

She looks best in green, brings out the fire in her hair. She'd rather wear a color like rosebuds and the creases in babies' thighs, like untouched things and early morning skies. But pink would, of course, be 'orrible with her 'air.

Pink's the wrong color in other ways, ways they cannot see. They think she is a green girl; these are her salad days. They think she is a virgin still, and forget she's had Voldemort inside her.

She knew Hogwarts then as a man knows a woman. She slithered deep within its folds; she opened up its hidden places and deflowered its secret chamber. That is why, surrounded by thousands of mysteries, she can fight with flame. When Hogwarts is penetrated by defilers she fights with the fury of a cuckolded king.

But when it comes to him, she doesn't force her way to face him, doesn't slip and slide past those who'd hold her back. They told her to hide because they think she's too young. They do not know a part of herself is always hiding, and she must hide inside herself, in Hogwarts hidden places, to keep that place a secret.

That is why when she is finally released, she fights Bellatrix but cannot kill her. Her madness is so familiar. Voldemort's been inside this one, too, and Ginny cannot bear to look at what she might have been, cannot bear to see.

(Look at me.)

 

**~Draco~**

For him, glory was once green. The flags and crests uncurling from the ceilings were recognition. Then red and gold instead unfold, that first year at Hogwarts, and green gets swept aside. Instead it lodges deep inside him, this green, this need for glory, this victory that should have been his, but now belongs to Harry Potter.

The need grows, deep within, a vine tight around his heart. Potter is a pest, a parasite whose red-gold mold deliberately rots the leaves just when they're unfurling. If Potter could just be pruned, cut away, weeded out or transplanted, someone else could have a spot in the sun. The light would all be lime. Everyone would (look) at him.

But at last when victory is his, the Hand of Glory is clenched tight in a fist of fear. In this Peruvian utter darkness, there's no one to recognize him, admire him, look (at) him at all. They are blind but he is not, and that's the first time he sees them. Really sees them, students, his classmates, suffering, in pain. Invisible, he is nothing but their shadow.

Almost a year later, when they show him Vernon Dudley, he cannot meet Potter's eyes. In their green lies long sought glory, his chance to cut down the Boy Who Lived. But for the first time he looks at Harry Potter and doesn't see that green eyed monster. He sees a boy, not glorified, afraid. Draco looks at Potter, disguised, and it's himself Draco doesn't recognize. He looks and thinks, that could be (me.)

 

**~Snape~**

His life has been all monochrome, muted through the film of memory. He sees the world through dreams of her, of things that never were. There, locked inside, the truth is: who he is and how he feels, all the colors of the world—the only things quite real. On the outside, everything else is just a blur. Looking through this haze of lies, memories and disguise, he doesn't see her in her son's eyes. Anyway, that would be too cruel.

He's done it all for her, he says, and this is not a lie. She sacrificed herself that her son might live; she would've sacrificed the world. He's sacrificed himself already, now only remains the rest. He's not turning a new leaf; it's always been this way.

He should tell her son to leave this place, to hide; that's what she would've wanted. She never would've seen how demanding that her son die could really be the way. She believed in black and white, that Dumbledore and Grindelwald never could be friends. She believed that sacrifice should be a choice. Lily never believed in gray.

The thoughts spooling from his head are the same hue as his Patronus, steel-colored and empty. She would not have wanted her son to see this, Harry's call to death. Even after her dying and sixteen years of him trying, he still will not be what she wanted. He acts now not for her, but for the rest. To be himself is his final act of courage.

One last time, and for the first time since she died, he lives for now, and sees green. He wants her eyes to see.

"Look at me."

 

**~Neville~**

He should've been a growing thing, roots deep down feeding him, leading him toward sunlight. Instead he'd been inverted, with his roots exposed, vulnerable, needing him to lead them in reverse. Every time he visited he had to teach them how to eat.

They do not grow. They are atrophied; they shrink. He wishes to be petrified, cannot bear to grow while they remain children. He might at least sustain them, in these lives they do not live; his fossil self would fertilize their soil. They could all live underground.

Years of watching over them when he visits, it's no wonder his thumb is green, that he can coax things from the dirt. When the roots are right, all plants need is love, and care, a little bit of light. He has all of that and more to give. It's no wonder that when dark descends on Hogwarts, he's determined to bring light by which to live. He starts the army from the beginning all over again, grass-roots. Growing resistance out of dirt; Neville Longbottom grows up.

Before then, there'd been a basilisk in his brain. Not a real one, but petrifying him just the same. It worms its way around inside, leaving emptiness in it wake. Every form it takes is just another piece of Voldemort, possession, madness, fear. Ginny has one too, opening the secret chambers of her heart; it hollowed out his parents. Wore Bathilda like a suit and Bellatrix is its shell. All of them are stone for its parasitic coils.

Bringing the sword down on Nagini's neck, he severs the last tie. Slaying the serpent with the magic sword's been done before; it's old hat, really. But looking in the dead snake's eyes, he sees she could've found a place within him, a place to own, a place of stone and dirt. Not now. At last, they (look) are (at) all (me) free.

 

**~Voldemort~**

A mother's death is nothing new at all. The Dark Lord's mother died because of her son as well; it's just the natural way of things, of life too weak to fight it. And for all that his line of blood was strong, it's the way of family trees: when the bow breaks, so the Muggle saying goes, the baby's meant to fall. So he, too, was helpless once, in that orphanage where he remembers crying. He remembers it again, standing over baby Potter, raising his wand to kill him.

Except, of course, this mother's death is different this time. Lily's love lives on in Potter, forming his worldly flesh, filling up his eyes. Across them flashed her death and it burned them love limned lime. The killing curse was meant for a helpless creature, not this protected babe. It rebounds back to find a mark more suited, a different child, never shielded by its mother.

Dislodged from where it has been shoved down deep, revived, almost, from where it has been buried, this other child looks for a place to hide. He remembers crying in the orphanage, remembers being beaten raw and writhing, remembers hiding under chairs.

It's no wonder he finds a place in the boy who will live in a cupboard, under the stairs.

But when the Dark Lord rises, Lily's love lives in him, forming his worldly flesh, and the babe for which a mother died finds a place in one a mother never loved at all. Innocence has been shoved down deep, almost buried; in the dreamspace of King's Cross, Harry finds it, still raw, still writhing, still underneath the seat. He cannot bear to see.

(Look at me.)


End file.
